


Splinters (drabbles for a tumblr prompt meme)

by 37h4n0l



Category: B: The Beginning (Anime)
Genre: Art Discourse, Baking, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Gore, Hair Jokes, Keiths past, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, ill add more tags if the other drabbles come up, kamuis weird creative endeavours
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-09 07:44:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14711955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/37h4n0l/pseuds/37h4n0l
Summary: Fills for the tumblr prompt meme. Shoot me an ask for one anytime here: https://minatsuki-on-main.tumblr.com/post/174017484115/prompts-list or ask in comments![tags/rating to be added as they come]1. kamutsuki2. keithlily3. keithlily4. minatsuquinn





	1. “ew, that is so sappy, i might vomit.” Kamui/(phantom) Minatsuki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art is a debatable concept.

“Not tonight, no.” **  
**

The phrase is dismissive, Minatsuki leans back against the padded armchair, looking like he’s thinking of anything but the oppressive atmosphere of the gathering room.

“Why not? We can’t do this on our own” Kukuri retorts immediately, earning no response.

“Well,  _I_  can d—”

“Oh, shut up” she interrupts her brother before he can say anything.

“Take someone else with you as backup. I have duties to attend.” It takes a few seconds for Minatsuki to wave her away even like that; Kukuri stands up, irritated.

“What, one of these weirdos? They’ll just make a mess!” Kamui grins when she points at him, playing with a knife in his sitting spot. “Can we have Laica at least?”

“Absolutely not, he’s coming with me.”

As if to demonstrate that, the two of them get up to leave, Minatsuki gesturing that the meeting is dismissed as Laica carries his little suitcase of vials behind him. A whole suitcase — nobody dares to question why they would need that much of it, or what absolutely urgent mission they have to participate in, for that matter. The thought does occur to one person in the room, but leaders don’t like being contradicted.

“Mina—”

Izanami puts a hand on Kukuri’s shoulder — nobody has even seen her walk there, it’s anxiety-inducing when she does that — to calm her down.

“I’ll go with you guys, okay?”

It’s effective in ending the discussion.

*

They’re gone in a few minutes. To sleep, that is, because it’s turning evening and despite the appearances most of the Market Maker elite goes to bed early when not busy; their days are exhausting and reggies have a circadian rhythm as well. It’s almost comical how they’re like a bunch of children on curfew. There are a few exceptions to the rule though — one of them is Kamui, now wandering around the airship, bored out of his mind as he always is. He has no particular reason to sniff around in the helicopter’s landing strip, it just happens to be the place he finds himself in.

Then there’s a steady tapping of shoes from the distance, just loud enough to hear. Maybe whoever is here will entertain him, who knows. Kamui yawns before peeking into the corridor the steps seem to be coming from.

“Hey Minatsuki!”

The sound of soles against metal slows down a few metres away from him; Minatsuki raises an eyebrow as he gets closer, seemingly too concentrated on something that isn’t Kamui.

“Minatsuki,” he repeats then, not pleased with being ignored by the person he’s trying to annoy, “where are you even going?”

“What does it matter to you?”

“Just curious, c’mon.”

Minatsuki does nothing but sigh disdainfully as he keeps walking and Kamui has to start following him. They’re at the landing strip and the former looks at his watch nervously, seeing that the helicopter hasn’t been started up yet.

“Man, just say it’s a mission, there’s no need to be secretive about it” Kamui tries again. “Is it classified?”

“I’m going to an art exhibit.”

There are a few minutes of silence fit for a joke’s punchline before the laughter erupts from Kamui violently. Minatsuki looks the other way, sends a message on his phone, taps his feet with impatience, probably just trying to look like he’s not paying attention to the other — folding into two on the ground — but there’s a thin line of anger on his forehead.

“What’s funny?” There’s just enough trembling in his voice to indicate he’s about to snap.

“This is just—” Kamui cuts himself off with more uncontrollable wheezing. “You’re going  _where_?”

“Are you deaf? I do as I wish on my days off and I don’t have to recount my leisure activities to you.”

The laughter subsidizes as Laica shows up in the background from somewhere and the helicopter gets into motion with a rumble. He waves at Minatsuki to urge him to leave.

“Wait! Wait!”

He turns around to look, with knit eyebrows, at Kamui still brushing away a tear in the corner of his eye.

“What artist is it?”

“Monet,” Minatsuki sighs, looking away like he’s already afraid of the reaction, but the other holds the chuckle in — visibly, but he does.

“So you like flowers and all that?”

“I appreciate art” comes the curt reply as he walks away, Kamui still following him a few steps behind to continue the conversation.

“Did you know I’m quite the artist myself?”

It seems to strike a nerve because Minatsuki actually turns around and stops, even giving up on his hurry. A few silent seconds pass. His expression betrays an anger far greater than before — Kamui has a fleeting concern. It seems like Laica is content with letting the scene play out, too, as he’s sat in the helicopter door, dangling his legs and reordering the vials of golden fluid in the open suitcase.

“Don’t you  _dare_  compare yourself to actual artists with your petty little displays of butchery.”

“Are you one of those people who are all up their own asses about it?” Kamui snorts. “You’re a good leader, Minatsuki, but do you think that gives you the right to tell what is and isn’t art?”

“I draw the line at a piece being  _at least_  pleasant to look at. I can’t fathom how one keeps their stomach from turning upside down when seeing those  _things_.” He wrinkles his nose with so much disgust it even disheartens Kamui a bit.

Minatsuki turns back to approach the helicopter again then, aloof as always, while the other tries to elaborate a comeback. He tries to act so high and mighty, but his sharp tongue can get childishly vitriolic, Kamui notes down the lesson of today. He yells after Minatsuki nevertheless, right before the door is about to close.

“That’s all rich coming from you, tell me the same next time you cut someone to bits!”

He can see him sighing condescendingly despite the engine’s noise obfuscating whatever he responds.

*

Like a lot of other decisions Minatsuki makes, it turns out to be too bold — not to tell anyone in time that they could also need backup. He assumes he can carry out an assassination effortlessly in a packed exhibit hall; on his own, too, because Laica is confined to the security room, checking the cameras pointed at exits so the target doesn’t leave. Of course someone notices Minatsuki and kicks up a fuss. Of course he makes a slaughter out of it when the panic puts his mind in a weird place. Of course they need to ask the only person who isn’t sleeping or on their own mission to help them out.

Minatsuki can feel his nerves twitch when Kamui exterminates a security guard from behind with a swing of his saw, but it’s a smaller annoyance than having to deal with the situation on his own. They’re in a corridor, people coming at them from both sides, which was admittedly not very manageable for Minatsuki on his own, but it can work for the two of them.

“Sneaky of you to lie to me about this, I’m hurt” Kamui says with a mock sniff as he cuts someone straight in the face.

“Stop blabbering already.” There’s a golden blade piercing through two guards simultaneously as they stand aligned behind each other.

“You needed my help, now you gotta deal with me.”

“I’ll compensate you if you shut up.”

Eventually, the attackers come to an end too. Minatsuki charges at the last one, tired and feeling a bit of need for golden fluid; he stabs once, but then he stabs again almost without thinking. The adrenaline rushes to his head as he kneels over the victim and his lohengrin descends onto them repeatedly — he wouldn’t be able to explain why. It’s not that the little discussion about art from earlier had any effect on him, at least not consciously so, it feels more like raw sadism. He only stops when he feels physically too tired to keep mutilating and only notices then that Kamui has been staring. There’s a bit of undeniable fascination in his eyes.

“And don’t claim I would lie, it  _was_  an art exhibit” Minatsuki pants as he stands up.

“Surely is now” Kamui looks around the corridor full of dead bodies.

The other huffs, ready to contradict him on the statement, but is cut off as he opens his mouth.

“If you’re still gonna say you’re here for Monet and not to do  _this_ ,” he darts around them with his eyes to indicate, “then you  _are_  lying.”

“You know nothing about me.” Minatsuki sounds exactly as he always does when he takes personal offense, but maybe also hurt and in denial for a small part.

“Stop pretending we’re not alike, c’mon.” Kamui kneels down to the same corpse the other pieced up, sticking a hand into the open guts with unabashed curiosity.

“I’m going to  _vomit_.”

Laica comes back from his position a few minutes later, strangely unperturbed as he avoids the bodies in his way to approach them. He tosses a vial for each in their direction.

“At least the target was taken out despite all of this,” he examines the mess of blood and death, sizeable stains on the fancy wallpaper. “I will contact the district gang for cleanup.”

He starts dialing up the number but Minatsuki raises a hand as a signal for him to wait. For a moment, he looks like he’s thinking hard, then he pokes the same remainders of a security guard with the tip of his shoe.

“Kamui can have this one.”

There’s a smirk spreading across Kamui’s face as the meaning of the phrase registers, he looks — and probably feels — like he’s won a debate.

“Are you flirting with me through gifts now? Ew, that is so sappy,  _I_  might vomit.”

Minatsuki doesn’t even look towards him as he starts to walk away, conjuring the golden sword to point it behind himself menacingly.

“I said I’d compensate you  _if you shut up_ , so say another word and I’ll make you into art.”

But Kamui feels twice as much anticipation as usual as he drags the body away; he’ll be sure to make a masterpiece this time.


	2. "you promised me a cookie!" Keith/Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily tries baking and it doesn't go well.

Lily is the kind to wear her heart on her sleeves — and when she gets invested in something, it shows. It’s not hard to recall when the latest  _ obsession _ started, the morning she burst into the office, almost knocking Boris over and dropping whatever she was holding. They thought it was an emergency first, that she had figured something out regarding the latest case.

 

“Did you figure something out?” Eric asked, literally, looking up from his paperwork.

 

“I did!” Lily replied then, panting, almost before the sentence even ended. 

 

She slammed a rectangular object tightly wrapped in a plastic bag on the desk before the main display, almost violently, and looked at the rest of the team with unwavering seriousness. They looked back, silently.

 

“This is important,” she declared as if giving a speech, “you guys need to try these.”

 

Keith, who was dozing off in the back of the room at the time, only groaned and cracked his neck as his coworkers gathered around whatever it was that Lily brought. Call it intuition; something was telling him it wouldn’t be important, or at least not important enough for him to sit up according to the cost-benefit analysis. The fact that he approached them anyway in a matter of a few seconds was either a result of the surprised noises the RIS-team was making or Lily’s tendency to do irrational things rubbing off on him. He peeked out from behind Mario’s and Kaela’s shoulders to take a look at the middle of the desk.

 

“Did you make this, Lily?” Bran sounded frightened in that moment, though he had the excuse of  _ always _ sounding frightened.

 

While Lily was nodding proudly, Keith decided to inspect the  _ thing _ more closely. And it didn’t result in a lot of new information.

 

It was hard to tell even the intention behind what resided in that baking tin; maybe it looked like something that was  _ trying  _ to be tiramisu, except none of its individual components  _ were _ tiramisu, like a culinary ship of Theseus. It had been split into pieces that vaguely connected with each other due to their nearly liquid consistency. There was  _ something _ atop it that surely wasn’t cocoa, maybe coffee powder, and the ladyfingers were peeking out in various places rather than staying nicely buried under the mascarpone cream. Which — maybe wasn’t mascarpone at all but it was less suspicious than the rest. 

 

The Coastal Branch ate Lily’s creation in dead silence that day, after which it was never mentioned again. 

 

Little do they know that it’s just the start of a trend; days pass and Lily brings something new, this time it’s an attempt at a cake and not any less of a poor one than the tiramisu. The others consume it without asking questions, and maybe Keith, despite his harsh straightforwardness and proficiency in cooking, understands why. Sure, the flavour is just as much a disaster as the form with too many strong tastes competing with each other in an obnoxious way, but Lily seems so endearingly enthusiastic about it that something within him keeps him from making remarks. Keith has to wonder when he became so soft.

 

It’s a helpful attitude on an emotional level, but not a practical one. Lily keeps bringing atrocities baked by her and convinces herself her coworkers actually want to eat them, makes sure those on a day off or ill have their share put away in the fridge. The first one to  _ dare _ bring up the topic is Kaela.

 

“You sure are cooking a lot lately, huh?” She asks somewhat monotonously without looking away from the program she’s compiling. “Are you trying to find a husband?”

 

“Ah, no way” Lily gesticulates, smiling in embarrassment. “I had this idea… Since I like pastries, I wanted to learn how to bake so I could make them for myself, you know. I just got started but I’m learning a lot!”

 

Keith, overhearing the conversation, wants to add something like ‘It doesn’t show,’ but he stops himself. 

 

The worst thing is that she really,  _ really _ isn’t getting any better. Every dessert is off in one way or another and Keith can see the rest of them gradually growing tired; Mario abandons half a slice of strangely gelatinous raspberry pie with burnt crust underneath, saying he doesn’t feel well. It wouldn’t be surprising if it wasn’t a lie. 

 

But when Lily, at eight in the morning with only three of them already in the office, shows up with a bag full of puddings that are practically  _ dry _ , Keith snaps.

 

“Listen,” he raises his voice, slamming the can of premade coffee in his hand on the desk as he stands up, “do you even taste test the stuff you make?”

 

She seems heartbroken, but it only lasts a few seconds before her eyebrow twitches. Of course,  _ because _ she’s Lily, she’s convinced she’s in the right.

 

“All you do is criticize me all the time” she groans.

 

“Because I’m honest instead of being nice.”

 

“You haven’t even said anything concrete!” Lily is already at the point of yelling while pointing her finger wildly against Keith’s chest. Bran turns their way, shaken up by the fuss.

 

“Alright then! Your baking skills are terrible.”

 

Lily looks like she wants to reply but doesn’t really know how to; she looks around for confirmation or denial, but both Mario and Bran divert their gazes in order to avoid giving any signal. She doesn’t distribute the puddings that day, but Keith can see her taking out one under the desk during a meeting and poking at it, frustrated, trying to figure out what’s wrong. It barely budges, which is definitely not how a pudding should act. 

 

The workday passes and the team is going home; Kaela is having a conversation with Mario about the sports car she’s planning to buy while Bran is fiddling with the settings on Boris’s phone which he can’t figure out on his own, but they all say their greetings and walk out shortly. Only two people are still inside the building, sat by the coffee machine in the corridor.

 

“Where did you get the recipes? Internet?” Keith sighs, side-eyeing one of the godawful-looking puddings from earlier.

 

“Yeah, I tried doing what they said” Lily says, thoughtful like she’s solving a murder case. She’s sat next to the other on the bench they placed there for breaks.

 

“ _ Tried _ ?”

 

“Well, I don’t always have all the ingredients… And those recipes seem weird as well, they always look like they don’t have enough sugar… And that other time I didn’t see the point of putting yeast in it so I didn’t… Sometimes I try to add something to be creative… But that’s about it...”

 

Keith leans back and sighs with so much exasperation it’s almost loud.

 

“You need to follow the instructions before being creative,” he points a finger at Lily’s forehead, startling her, “once you learn the rules you can start breaking them. But you need a lot of patience to make food. Humbleness.”

 

“I suppose…” She looks annoyed but also willing to listen.

 

“And start with something easy, like—”

 

“Like?”

 

“Cookies. Just plain cookies. Don’t put anything extra in them.”

 

Lily’s eyes sparkle with determination like they always do when she sets a goal. She hops up from her seat, suddenly full of energy, does a salute just to be quirky about it. 

 

“Alright, I’ll make cookies! I’ll do what you said, then I’ll have you eat one so you have to admit it’s good!”

 

With that, she runs off without even saying goodnight, and Keith just sits there for a minute more, wondering why life seems to be moving faster than him sometimes as the sunset filtering through the window paints the corridor orange.

 

The promise is delivered on a mere two days later. Lily seems excited, almost anxious when she places the box on the desk — the rest of the team is already fearing the worst. The metallic lid reveals thirty or so simple chocolate chip cookies; some of them are slightly misshapen and the chips aren’t evenly distributed, but they don’t look  _ tragic _ , which is a step forward. It is, however, one of those moments when Keith doesn’t feel like bothering, so he retracts into the background as much as he can manage, a brief thought about how being a chameleon or  _ invisible _ would make his days much easier. 

 

“Hey, you’ve gotten better” Boris says, almost surprised, as he takes a bite tentatively. 

 

It encourages the others to try as well and they seem to come to the conclusion that Lily’s creation is agreeable for once, though not perfect, but still proper food. Her smile reaches her ears as her eyes dart around her coworkers, as triumphant as a queen regarding her kingdom. She jolts up then, something suddenly occurring to her.

 

“Keith!” A few seconds and she’s already running to the other side of the office — her target has already stood up, attempting to sneak away through the back door.

 

Lily hugs him tightly from behind. A suffocated yelp and a crack of bones.

 

“Please never do that again” Keith says when she finally lets go, massaging his back.

 

“Thank you so much for helping” she smiles, turning around to leave.

 

“It was very basic advice…” he mutters under his breath in response, but Lily already isn’t there.

 

Keith watches her chat and explain her feats with baking to Boris, how they all seem to be having this little get-together that they’re even postponing work for — irresponsible, exactly something Lily would do, or that now happens in Lily’s presence in a seemingly spontaneous way. Maybe he’s irritated with himself because he finds something about it endearing. He takes a few resigned steps towards them, exhaling as he ignores his own inner sappiness.

 

“Hey,—”

 

Lily turns his way a bit confused. She looks confused that Keith is even  _ attempting _ to socialize; maybe there’s something wrong with his character after all, he thinks to himself. 

 

“You promised me a cookie…”

  
As Keith chews on the sweet baked dough a few minutes later, he has to  _ bitterly _ admit to himself that it isn’t half bad. 


	3. “why the hell is there glitter everywhere?” Keith/Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith seems to be secretly working on something and Lily is intent on finding out what it is.

Winter comes down hard on Cremona; it makes for an unbearable, freezing cold and the sun disappearing behind the horizon as early as seven in the evening. It’s quite humid, too, bad for the joints and the clothing the water might soak into, creating a frozen blanket around anyone who dares step outside. Same reason why citizens prefer staying in their cozy houses during the season.

 

Lily has never been deterred by anything as silly as the weather when she has a task to accomplish. Eric praises this trait of hers — whenever he’s not scolding her for essentially the same thing, which is ironic, but she wouldn’t expect more coherence from the  _ four-eyed walking chin _ . Her uggs sink into the ankle-deep snow as she roams the empty streets with quick hops, leaving a trail of footsteps behind. A few snowflakes tangle in her bangs and eyelashes but she’s in too much of a rush to care.

 

It’s dark and finding the place she’s looking for is a bit harder than usual, despite her normally knowing where it is. Lily doesn’t visit there as often as she would like to; she risks being sent home about half the times anyway. Well — three quarters, more like. Today she decides she’ll insist even if she has to break down the door like Boris did a few months ago. Fortunately, the gate is open, but the elevator hasn’t been fixed (she wonders if it ever will be) and she has to take the stairs. Her irreverently violent knocks on the door are the only sound in the silent condominium.

 

“What  _ on earth _ is it at this hour?”

 

Normally, Lily would jump right into the bickering impulsively. Normally — when Keith isn’t in the state he’s in, something that shocks her enough to freeze for a moment; both literally and figuratively in these circumstances. 

 

People say it’s hard to understand Keith, but for some aspects Lily finds him frighteningly easy to read. One can tell clearly when he’s too invested in something, when there’s an obsession driving him insane enough to lose all cognition of his own physical circumstances. It shows in his hair growing long in that frizzy, uncombed nest, in his beard sprouting astray on his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes. Green eyes that are tired and agitated at the same time, a touch of fanaticism that belongs to children and not middle-aged men.

 

“You’ve disappeared for _ weeks _ ” she ends up blurting out, with enough stupor to give away how taken aback by the other’s messy appearance she is.

 

“Yeah, so?” He groans, standing in the doorway hunched over and still, in this situation where a decent person would’ve already let the guest inside. “Do I have to hand in reports to you about my daily life? Are you my supervisor now?”

 

“You haven’t said anything to anyone!” Lily pouts, hugging the paper bag with red bean buns in it closer to her chest. 

 

“If it’s Boris asking, tell him to call me directly if he needs something and that I’m alive.” He almost closes the door but she sticks a hand between it and the frame to prevent him, with an amount of strength a petite girl is unlikely to have.

 

“Why are you always holed up in here?” Lily has already slipped inside and is taking her coat and scarf off, placing the package on the table as Keith’s eyebrow twitches in surrender. “What are you even doing?”

 

“Doesn’t concern you” comes the mumbled response — but she’s long learned to disregard those coming from him.

 

“We haven’t had any big cases since Killer B,” Lily strolls around, inspecting every detail of the main room in Keith’s apartment, looking for hints, “so what work do you have? Is it something super-classified that Boris isn’t telling me about? Is that it?”

 

“If it was I wouldn’t tell you anyway” Keith throws himself on one of the chairs, too tired to even prevent his house from being rummaged. 

 

He can hear Lily’s steps halting in a short while and turns his head in her direction; she’s standing at the entrance of his study room, silently like she’s seen a ghost, trying to interpret the first useful clue.

 

It wouldn’t be a surprise in and of itself that the place Keith works in is a disaster, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the  _ usual disaster _ . There’s notebooks and old tomes thrown around, spread open and marked with small post-its of various colours, a system of organizing information nobody understands except the one who created it. The floor of the area at the centre, circled with whiteboards, is so tightly covered in sheets of papers with calculations and documents that they make it impossible to see the floorboards. A bit to the side there’s a variety of chemical equipment — an alcohol burner, ten or so containers, a few spoons, a stool with test tubes, wooden forceps, tweezers, and a plethora of other objects she can’t even name. She kneels down to reach out, running her hand along one of the papers, eyes wide and curious, as Keith enters the room groggily and leans against the doorframe. Lily looks at her own lifted fingertips, and then up at him.

 

“Why the hell is there glitter everywhere?” She sounds genuinely puzzled with a hint of amused.

 

“Gold, not glitter. Dumbass.”

 

“Then why is there  _ gold _ everywhere?” Lily’s gaze darts through the complicated formulas on the sheets. Her voice grows progressively more quiet. “Keith, what is this?”

 

He ignores the question, sighs instead, waves at her to go back to the dining room. The next moment they’re sitting at the table; Lily wants to tell him it’s way too late for coffee and both of them will sleep badly, but it doesn’t sound like the right moment. She can sense something heavy boiling in Keith, she has since she came in. Then he speaks, suddenly, still showing her his back as he brews with expertise.

 

“I was trying to create it.” His eyes don’t leave the mocha as he pauses. “It’s tough because now there’s certainly no material to work with. I thought something would have been left from Koku’s fight, a bit of DNA, a speck of dust, but there’s nothing. I had to start from scratch.”

 

“Is this still about the…?” Lily’s breath catches in her throat, but she isn’t planning to continue the sentence anyway.

 

“It’s not over. It never has been.”

 

Keith takes the pot off the stove and pours both cups he previously prepared full. The other is in too much thought to remember to put sugar in the beverage and flinches as soon as she takes a sip, a bit of comic relief amidst the unexpected heaviness of the conversation.

 

“Why would you spend your time doing this?” She lingers on the window, following the movements of the snowfall. “Aren’t there scientists in charge of it?”

 

“Incompetents,” Keith sighs, drinking the coffee in one go, “and I don’t trust them either. They don’t have half the familiarity I have with this.”

 

“You’ve done enough for this issue” Lily says — even sounds a bit angry — before indicating his mess of a scalp with her index. “If you continue like this, you’ll just get fleas and die of sleep deprivation or something!”

 

He stays silent for a few seconds, only to stand up, ignoring her enthusiasm and her healthily mundane way of seeing things.

 

“They’re still around, a lot of them. Crimes  _ will _ keep happening if we don’t get off our asses to prevent them.”

 

“And are you planning to come up with some mystery antidote out of the blue on your own when they haven’t found one in three hundred years?” Comes a groan.

 

Neither of them speak for a few seconds, a time period which prolongs uncomfortably into the late night; going home at this time will be a nuisance. She can’t help but reflect on these small, petty issues, it’s like an impulse. Maybe it’s one Keith doesn’t have, maybe that’s why he’d be capable of starving to finish solving an equation or why he looks so troubled as he turns his face a little. It’s one of those moments when people call him unreadable but Lily thinks she has a  _ rough guess _ . 

 

“I lived there for some time when I was small” he says suddenly, making her jolt on her chair. “I saw them every day, how they kept making more of them and then brought them away when they were old enough, around my age back then.”

 

The snow starts falling more intensely outside, it looks almost violent. Keith continues after looking for words for a few moments.

 

“It didn’t occur to me because I wasn’t old enough to understand it. They never even told me they weren’t humans, I just saw kids like me disappearing. I didn’t care because I was self-centered and cared more about the fancy codes on the Jetblack. I could’ve known if I sniffed around more, if I had asked my father.”

 

“Keith,” Lily’s voice cracks, she’s surprised at herself for coming off so serious, “you were twelve.”

 

“I’m the only one who can do something like this out of experience. I guess it’s  _ fate _ , isn’t it?” He sits down again at the other side of the table, still not looking at her, sarcasm bitter from his tongue like the coffee he drinks. It’s a subtle mockery of Koku, of Gilbert, of other people involved in the whole kerfuffle from months back. 

 

“I guess you are a bit self-centered.”

 

Keith stares at Lily a bit incredulously while she walks away from the place where she was sat, as if leaving. She can admit to herself that it’s intentional, it’s funny to see Genie confused because it yanks him back to reality; especially the part where she steps to him instead, just staring down without saying anything. She can see it on his face, she must look at least a little bit menacing. 

 

“You’re self-centered because you think you’re the only smart person in the world” Lily says, and it’s softer than she intended, it ruins her own act. “There are plenty of other hard-working people and they’ll figure this out. Genie this, Genie that, just relax for five minutes! And don’t guilt-trip yourself!”

 

“My supervisor  _ and _ my mom” Keith mutters to himself, making her exhale in frustration.

 

“You should eat the buns I brought you instead. They’re from a good bakery.”

 

“I can’t fathom why you keep giving me these. I can make proper food.”

 

“This is what I get for trying to cheer someone up, huh…” Lily rolls her eyes.

 

They wait again, there are unexpectedly many silences between them. Keith is the kind that wanders off with his thoughts, and he seems to be digesting her reactions now, weighing how much of her benevolence he should consider. At least it’s a drowsy pondering and not a restless one. Lily isn’t as reflective as him and thinks about checking the time on the wall clock instead. 

 

“Crap, it’s getting late. I really need to go home now.”

 

She moves to leave but turns around almost immediately like she forgot something. She tangles her hand with a fistful of his hair, feeling the greasiness but not caring much. It lifts up Keith’s head a little.

 

“Oh, and cut this, or at least wash it.”

 

He looks like he wants to retort but goes into a temporary paralysis instead — like the small kiss on his forehead registers too late and receptors on that particular patch of skin stopped working exactly then. The look of confusion on his face is priceless. Lily can’t help the corners of her mouth curling up; soon she’s already at the entrance to leave, as quickly as she came. 

 

“Be kinder to yourself!” She yells back before shutting the door and she’s almost certain that Keith is still in the same position, frozen. The thought entertains her.

 

Sometimes Lily has to ask herself why she thinks he’ll ever improve — in his mood, his obsession with the past, anything — but there’s something in her that makes her keep hoping. She has to rub her hands together because there’s a hellish, unbearable cold and a  _ snowstorm _ when she steps outside. She decides to jog, seeing it as the only way to warm herself and get home soon. 

  
Yes, people call her stupidly optimistic for believing in Keith that much, and for once Lily will take it. Assuming he would pay her a taxi was  _ very optimistic _ and  _ very stupid _ . 


	4. “why don’t you take a picture? it’ll last longer.” Quinn/(phantom) Minatsuki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Criminal organizations have inside jokes too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only reason this took me so long is because for days I've been in a limbo between studying and being literally too tired to study (or do anything). I can't say I'll be able to slack soon so I'll continue doing the reqs bit by bit in my attempt at ascending to Content Avatar by writing stuff for obscure rarepairs. It's brario time next.

For most it would be hard to imagine an organization like Market Maker acting informal at all. Death, alcohol and drugs, all correlates of organized crime, should bring about an atmosphere of constant seriousness and violence, no amity or anything remotely considered  _ fun _ . One could argue they aren’t even human, just engineered killing machines thrown together in a bunch, trying to tolerate each other in spite of the irritable mood inherent to their nature.

 

Truth is, they  _ do _ joke around. And when they do, it’s petty and callous, a collective game of shoving each other around because snapping at insults would be regarded as too childish — the first one to get mad loses.

 

The twins are made fun of for being young, usually. They get condescending pats on their heads on the daily, Kamui mock-reprimands them for walking around in the airship at any time past eight in the evening, mentioning their supposed curfew as he tries to keep himself from laughing. If they ever attend a party, they get asked, kindly, if they prefer their drinks in sippy cups. Maybe as a counter to all these they’ve learned to tolerate it well by now, mostly shrugging it off or pointing a gun or two at whoever makes an unwarranted comment. 

 

Some members are apathetic to such pokes, like Yuna or Laica. The former ignores them completely, while the latter reacts with subtle remarks and vague hints at a response in kind, questions about whether the other person has taken their dose or if they have anything better to do. The rest of them have seen him make a joke  _ once _ and it came off bewildering enough for him to never do it again. 

 

Izanami is the master of comebacks, messing with them is a terrible idea because it always results in a prank on their part way more elaborate than the original joke. Something similar could be said about Kamui, but while Izanami is mostly infantile, he’s dark, malicious and has no filter. He’s usually the one teasing others, rather than being teased, and sometimes it gets too much. 

 

Quinn doesn’t want to openly admit it, but if he were to classify himself, he’d belong to the more thin-skinned category. He’s the butt of the joke way more often than anyone; there’s a reason why, and oh, does he loathe it, he loathes it so very much. It’s a matter of fact that this entire organization, this underground posse of murderers, has picked as its most entertaining subject  _ his hair _ . He desperately tries to think of a single day when it hasn’t been mentioned since the first time it was brought up (by whom? He can’t even recall) but always finds that he can’t. How a stupid joke like that can persist evades Quinn, but it’s a classic by now, he fears.

 

There’s one person nobody mocks, and it’s Minatsuki. Or, rather, some have tried and seen the results. It served as a good warning. In all fairness, Minatsuki doesn’t make fun of people either, because he’s too busy planning, drinking either solution-laced tea or spirits and trying to look dignified overall. At least Quinn  _ has thought _ he wouldn’t participate in something as below his level as inside jokes, but the disappointment comes on a particularly boring late afternoon.

 

The Moby Dick is under maintenance that day, so they’re staying at a hotel — they usually occupy a whole floor when they do, for alleged ‘safety reasons’ that everyone knows are really just the leader’s whims. It happens way too often that they just laze around when they have nothing to do, not really paying attention to each other as they’re scattered in the room, the farthest possible from the next person. Quinn is already tense, he knows the pokes at his appearance are bound to come out in these moments. There’s a hint of relief to the fact that the others seem more occupied than usual — Kukuri and Takeru are playing cards with each other, Izanami is taking hallucinogens and Kamui is in a corner, carving something obscene-looking out of wood with a pocket knife. It’s safe to assume Yuna is in her room, staring at herself in the mirror like she usually does, and that Laica is out for something drug-related. 

 

Minatsuki is sitting on one chair and balancing his feet on another behind his desk, absently staring out the window, he does this a lot. It has started raining outside. What he’s ruminating on in these moments is a mystery; one wouldn’t peg him as the contemplative type in the first place, he’s too reckless for that, but maybe it’s just an appearance. It makes Quinn wonder somehow, then bringing it to his attention that he’s never really tried putting himself in Minatsuki’s shoes before. Or reflected on him at all. Leaders ought to be detached and a bit unreachable, something he does in such a flawless and natural way that whatever allows him to sustain it must be a mindset not at all normal, Quinn thinks. He jolts back when he hears the yell from the other side of the room.

 

“Man, is Minatsuki really that much of a circus attraction for you to stare so long?”

 

Both the recipient of the phrase and the one mentioned in it turn towards Kamui, who has finally tossed away the meticulously sculpted wooden phallus after repeatedly throwing it up in the air and catching it.

 

“How do you know I was, were you staring too?” Quinn rolls his eyes, knowing that denial would be pointless.

 

“I asked first.”

 

“And I don’t have to answer you.”

 

“Fine, fine, keep crushing on the boss then” Kamui seems to resign suspiciously soon, getting up and stretching his back. “Mr. Walking Tassel” he adds, looking at him again, with a grin about to burst.

 

And it’s the last drop, because the irritation in Quinn has been building up for too long and he has limits of tolerance like anyone.

 

“You’ll never stop, will you? Fuckssake!” He stands up with impetus, hand slapping against the handle of the armchair from the movement. “It’s not funny! You’ve repeated it a billion times and it gets less funny each day! Do something useful with your life instead of talking shit about my hair like a five-year-old!”

 

Meanwhile Minatsuki has been watching the scene quietly, face betraying nothing but a faint trace of amusement as the bright blue of his eyes travels from one of them to the other under sluggish lids. 

 

“Owh, somebody got all worked-up” Kamui purses his mouth in mockery. “Maybe I do it because you become so angry, ever thought about that?”

 

“I get angry because it’s stupid, my hair doesn’t even look  _ like that _ ” Quinn hisses back at him before turning towards Minatsuki for approval. “Tell him, Minatsuki. That it’s even less witty because it makes no sense.”

 

The dignified leader — arbiter of even silly situations like these — looks as if in deep thought, thin eyebrows raised a little. He shifts a little in that chair that he somehow makes look like a throne, examines Quinn from tip to toe with a slow gaze. It almost seems like he’s going to say something important about this; he exhales before speaking with his usual, moderate tone.

 

“Well, it does sort of look like one.” The other’s expression furrows in confusion, to which Minatsuki specifies. “A tassel, I mean. One could say it has a different texture, but I have seen curled ones around.”

 

The absolute neutrality of his expression is perhaps even more angering than the ridicule itself. 

 

“Unbelievable.” Quinn exclaims before darting towards the room’s entrance, deciding he’s had enough. “You’re all such clowns I have no idea how I still endure you.” But as he’s about make a dramatic exit, he almost bumps into someone entering with just as much speed as him. 

 

It’s Laica, completely drenched from the rain, panting from having run. Unusual of him to do things hastily, and it spurs everyone present to look up, perplexed. There’s so much water soaked into his shirt that it sticks to his arms, transparent over the skin.

 

“There’s an emergency” he announces, obviously addressed to Minatsuki, who seems to understand from half-phrases because he immediately gets up with an exasperated sigh. Quinn watches them leave, disgruntled but sort of pleased that one of the people who did won’t be here to keep perpetuating the jokes at least.

 

The atmosphere is calmer when the door clicks again, Quinn has started flipping through a manual of military vehicles in the meanwhile to relax. Kamui has left and Izanami fell asleep in a drug-induced trance (they’re too young to be taking that stuff, but nobody has time to argue). Takeru seems to be on a winning streak from what Quinn has observed, the card game is dragging on into the late night because they always keep playing until the scores are even. He should really get himself a tank, maybe the new model, he ponders; he could ask Minatsuki. Like an ironic speak-of-the-devil scenario, the other appears in the door frame, walking back to his spot as his movements betray a bit of annoyance and exhaustion.

 

Quinn’s eyes stall. There’s  _ something wrong _ with the image before him, but at first he can’t figure out what. And as soon as he can — Minatsuki having settled on the chair again as he takes off a tragically damp suit jacket — his lips twist into a smile uncontrollably.

 

Rain makes hair curl, that much is to be expected. But it’s an entirely different and priceless display when the hair in question is  _ that long _ and when everyone is so used to seeing it perfectly smooth, shiny and combed-out. If Quinn’s hair could really be compared to brushes, tufts, tassels and poodles, he wouldn’t even know how to describe Minatsuki’s in this moment. It’s a mess of wild, entangled corkscrews with way too much volume, even more locks spilling in front of his eyes than usual, making it dubious that he can even see anything from behind them. It’s ruffled-up in all the wrong ways, bunching around his shoulders, slightly darker than usual due to the wetness. Quinn can’t contain the vindictive cackle anymore. The twins lift their gaze in unison, he can see they’re trying not to laugh as well.

 

“Yes, I know, hilarious.” Minatsuki comments sourly, trying to pretend he’s paying them no mind. “All because  _ guess who _ left all the umbrellas in the Moby Dick and then refused to lend me a hat.”

 

Laica stumbles in quietly, taking off his waistcoat to twist water out of it as he tries to look into another direction, probably because of the twitch in the corner of his mouth that Quinn could swear he saw for a moment.

 

“I apologize,” his voice cracks as he stifles the amusement in his tone, “this wasn’t predicted by the weather forecast.”

 

“Hey boss,” Quinn spits out between two giggles, stomach hurting from laughter, “nice wig you got there. 18th century?”

 

Minatsuki grits his teeth, triest to stay composed as he turns to him when he walks up to lean forth against the desk with an elbow. “That’s— Historically inaccurate.”

 

“True, I guess it’s way messier than a wig, isn’t it?” 

 

“I’m not in the mood for this.”

 

“Come on,” Quinn taunts, snicker still not wearing off, “we match now. Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer.”

 

Minatsuki appears to have given up on being angry, maybe recognizing the rightfulness of the jabs aimed at him. He cards through whatever his hair has become, quickly confronted with the fact that it’s too raveled for even his fingers to pass through. It’s even more comical that his voice still sounds aloof in the next phrase.

 

“You… know how to treat hair like this, right?” He says to the other. “Comb it out then.”

 

Quinn feels like in a surreal comedy skit. “Huh…? Did you just say that?”

 

“I’m  _ ordering _ you.” Minatsuki has already started approaching the door, gesturing at him to follow, to which Quinn breaks into another chuckle. 

 

“Whatever you say, boss” he obliges.

 

Laica and the twins are still unsure as to what went down before their eyes, unanimously entertained for the first time in the evening. It’s a good thing, for their image, that these instances remain behind locked doors in Market Maker. They can still hear the other two’s voices seeping in from the corridor. 

 

“And don’t say anything about this to Kamui.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yall I'll do literally any ship, just go ask on my blog from the link. I have anon turned on so you don't have to be registered on the Hellsite either.


End file.
